Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn Review

Tales of Arise is a fantastic RPG that brought the series back to relevance in 2021 after 5 years of absence. Boasting superb visuals and an explosive combat system, it rated highly in multiple reviews, including ours, and fans of the series looking for more Tales have had this expansion on their radars ever since it was announced back in September.

Entitled “Beyond the Dawn,” the expansion takes place one year after the events of the base game, where Alphen and the rest of the party enjoy a spell of peace after saving the world. Not all is as it seems, though, as the citizens of Dahna and Rena face the challenges of living under one “roof.” Through their travels, Alphen and Shionne meet Nazamil, the daughter of a Renan Lord and a Dhanan who has faced persecution due to her lineage.

Will the team be able to save Nazamil from mysterious evil forces and can the party restore peace and order once again?

Related – Read our Tales of Arise Review

Being an expansion, Beyond the Dawn obviously requires you to have played the base game in order to understand its events. It is treated as a separate adventure as you’ll need to access a different menu to play. That said, you’ll start off leveled up and rewarded with resources and currency depending on how much of the base game you’ve played. For reference, I’ve platinumed the base game and stopped at level 99, and starting off the expansion brought me back to level 65 without my endgame equipment and a lot of items missing.

Fear not, because you’ll be able to redownload your DLC (if you had them) items and costumes, ensuring that you won’t start off at a disadvantage!

Beyond the Dawn is largely the same experience, and players will easily familiarize themselves with the game and its combat system even if they haven’t played for the past year or so thanks to some key tutorial points. Don’t expect a revamp of anything, and despite its new quests and storyline, the Tales game you know and love remains unchanged.

So, what’s new?

First off, Beyond the Dawn offers players new content in the form of side-quests. Most of these are your routine fetch or “kill X” type, so they aren’t an exciting prospect overall. In fact, they become tedious at some point and lack challenge, so you’ll find yourself mostly ticking off boxes on a checklist.

There are character side-quests that focus on each of the six party members, but these have generally mundane story points and aren’t the sort of character-centric quests with the likes of other RPGs in the market. One big difference here is that players will be rewarded with a special item that powers up the boost attacks of each party member, giving you a slight edge in battle.

Interestingly, while all characters receive their time in the spotlight, Alphen has a particular questline that’s both heartwarming and funny, and it really reinforces the bond that the 6 members have formed over the course of their adventures. It’s nothing too groundbreaking, but it is a nice peek into these characters that we’ve come to know.

Speaking of battles, Beyond the Dawn also gives players new enemies to face in this 15-20 hour adventure. Don’t expect brand-new designs though, as these will be reskins and modified versions of previously faced foes. Players will also get new skill panels to fill up and titles to obtain, further improving the capabilities of Alphen and crew in battle.

The meat of the Beyond the Dawn content lies in its story, which we won’t spoil for you apart from the aforementioned premise. If there was any complaint we had with the base Tales of Arise game, it was that the story and its resolutions were something you could really see coming from a mile away. Apart from being predictable, it didn’t have twists or surprises that would somehow add depth to a shallow offering. It’s not all bad after all, but don’t expect it to break new ground and offer something original.

The same can be said about Beyond the Dawn’s storyline with Nazamil. Her motivations stem from long-standing issues about how she was raised and how the world and her surroundings see her, especially with her Dahnan and Renan lineage. Her situation is quite relatable, but the actions that she takes to resolve these issues are quite extreme and don’t really fall into a natural progression.

Beyond the Dawn falls into some of the same traps of the base game, where some dungeon sequences overstay their welcome, resulting in a tedious affair that’s riddled with high HP enemies and branching pathways. Most of the sights you’ll visit here are past locations, save for the exception of a couple of new Mausoleums to conquer, so things will definitely feel familiar.

Some of the reward choices in Beyond the Dawn definitely baffled me. Even before halfway into the game, I was able to craft my endgame weapon already thanks to crafting items that were simply purchased from the shop. This effectively nullified any other weapons that I got from exploration and even the endgame dungeon offered a vastly inferior replacement.

The rewards carried over from playing the base game along with the DLC bonuses certainly helped here, and I can see how they might not be as easy to come by if you didn’t already grind for it before, but it still doesn’t make sense that I’m able to fully kit myself less than halfway into the expansion.

There’s a recurring theme in Beyond the Dawn about the bond between party mates and how each personality offers a unique touch that complements each other. The power of friendship shines, and it simply highlights the strength of Alphen’s relationship throughout all of their travels. It’s all very mushy, so if you’re into that sort of thing, then you’ll find a lot of it here.

What we liked:

• Good excuse to fire up Tales of Arise again
• Final boss sequence was pretty epic
• Wholesome and heartwarming story, but…

What we didn’t like:

• … also cliche and predictable
• Final dungeon overstays its welcome
• Reward choices that don’t make sense
• New content is a bunch of routine and repetitive fetch quests

Verdict: Wait for it…

Beyond the Dawn leaves its mark as an excuse to play Tales of Arise again instead of on its own merits. While the expansion serves up a good amount of content that will last players around 15-20 hours, the new quests are quite routine and the overall story is nothing groundbreaking, which is something that most expansions should ideally have as their strongest suit.

Beyond the Dawn’s theme about the power of friendship is pretty much in line with the base game. That said, it is also very predictable and doesn’t really contain enough twists and turns to show a surprise. It is serviceable, but the base Tales of Arise game is solid enough to keep players hooked.

Nevertheless, more Tales of Arise is never bad, and Beyond the Dawn definitely serves that up. The combat system is as flashy and frenetic as ever, and playing it again simply reminds us how good the base game is even years after its release.

*Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn was reviewed on a PS5 with a review code provided by the publisher.